Emma Smith
Emma Smith is a character in the MMO The Secret World. She is a young girl being held for testing by the villainous Orochi Group. Her foster parents are in-fact both Orochi employees that "adopted" her in order to legally keep her with them as they investigate her in-born psychic powers. Emma attempts to contact the Player through-out the game with psychic visions in order to help them overcome Orochi. Mortal Sins The player will meet Emma along the Mortal Sins story-line while in the Carpathian Fangs in Transylvania. Emma will telepathically reach-out to the player as they are tracking down the vampire queen Mara and guide them to the cabin she had been kept in to analyze the research the Orochi organization was doing. The Cabin is revealed to be an outpost for a team of researchers Julia and Winston Smith, Emma's foster parents. Julia and Winston only adopted Emma in order to study her and while Winston still treats Emma as a child in his care Julia sees her first and foremost as a test subject. The Smiths had taken Emma to the Carpathian Fangs partially for isolation and partially because the Orochi had discovered a massive fissure in reality they deemed The Breach in the Fangs that the malevolent substance known as The Filth was leaking out from it. The Smiths were not only testing out the nature of Emma's psychic abilities but also a peculiar phenomena where in Emma and The Breach seemed to resonate with each-other. Researching the Orochi notes will reveal that there is a link between Mara and Orochi, someone high-up in the organization was helping Mara and sabotaging Orochi security on the Smith's research. Julia states she was able to save a good chunk of her research before they had to give-up their main information outpost but there was no way of knowing how much of it had been compromised prior. Emma briefly sends a direct psychically encoded transmission in the research logs to the player, that in-order to find a way to defeat Mara they must find the man with ties to her. The player may then follow Emma's projection to a cave with the Vampire Callisto, Mara's first sired vampire and witness to her betrayal against her husband Vlad Dracula. Calistio will provide vital information on Mara and a method to beating her once and for all. After the player has seen Callisto's plans through and Mara is destroyed, they will go to the site of Orochi's main research project at The Breach. While there the Orochi CEO Samuel Chandra can be heard crying out to "Lilith" for conducting some mad and dangerous game. "Lilith" had been mentioned through-out the arc as a background instigator of events for her link to supporting characters like Cucuvea and Octavian as well as being the one to convert Mara to a vampire in the first place. Emma's projection seems unswayed by the panic of Samuel Chandra or whatever is happening to the Breach because of this "Lilith". Emma will lead the player to the highest possible point in the Breach and then dive directly into the extra-dimensional rift. Upon following Emma, the player will be dropped directly into the Dreaming Prison, a place they had visited in their dreams through-out the game as The Dreamers, eldritch creatures locked within the prison, speak to them from deep inside begging to be let out. The player is given the opportunity to either fortify the bonds on the prison or loosen them in exchange for promises of power from The Dreamers. After completing the arc in conjunctions with their other choices made through-out the game while visiting the Dreaming Prison the player makes their final choice on whether the Dreamers can be trusted or not and leave the Dreaming Prison. When outside Emma is gone and Samuel Chandra and Lilith are nowhere to be seen. While this is the end of the formal story-line all the enigmatic figures appearing towards it's end are touched upon in the first post-story-line arc, Issue 7: A Dream To Kill. A Dream To Kill With Mara defeated the player will return to their initial Transylvanian contact, Carmen Preda. Carman is a member of the Council of Venice, tasked with keeping watch but with strict instructions not to interfere unless ground starts being lost against the remaining vampires. Carmen is, as it turns out, less concerned with Mara's straggler vampires than she is with the newly spiked amount of werewolves. Carman says the werewolves are fleeing something in the woods and thus the locals not only have more of the lycanthropes to deal with at a single time but also they may well be in serious trouble should whatever it is follow any further. Tracking the werewolves back to their source will reveal a massive malformed abomination fitting no known description of any other monsters documented by the Secret Societies. Defeating the abomination will cause it to revert to it's original form, that of a little girl. Following the girl/abomination's trail will reveal it came from one of several Orochi genetic testing outposts and many children were in-fact being gathered up for some sort of mass experiment. A derelict bunker of The Red Hand, the currently defunct secret society behind the Soviet Union, is found to have been still in working order and re-purposed by Orochi for their staff in-between the kidnappings. In the bunker the player will meet a Council Spy girl, who introduces herself as such. The Council Spy states that while the Council usually remains in a non-interference capacity, they can not stand idle while innocent children are being stolen from their beds and experimented on. The Council spy girl plays coy, saying she will only give her name once they have found the children to use as a casual incentive to find them. The Council spy also states she is particularly moved by the situation as she used to be a mother. After combing the base together both the player and spy will find that indeed, the children are not being held at the Red Hand base but rather at a secret Orochi outpost called The Nursery. The spy decides to stay and pours through the data at the bunker while the player goes to the Carpathian Fangs to a previously passed Orochi agent, Dragan Dzoavich who had pointed the player to Mara in the first place before meeting Emma. Dragan is fairly on edge and upset the player did not immediately return after discovering Emma's recording. He is also shown to be in possession of Emma's Teddy Bear from the tapes. Dragan Dzoavich is talking directly to the Bear, though the bear seems to say nothing in return, leaving it ambiguous if some psychic phenomena is attached to it or if Dragan has gone mad. Dragan realizes that if the player is looking for the Nursery they are almost certainly on Emma's trail. After helping Dragan clear the remote overrides for the Nursery an alarm sounds and all Orochi's remaining agents rush the valley to try to protect the Nursery themselves. Dragan gives the player a jet-ski to out-race them and the Teddy Bear to give back to Emma once found. The Council spy finds the player at Orochi's final line of difference but instructs them she has booby-trapped their perimeter and the two must make their daring escape. No sooner do the spy and player jump away from barricade than a sabotaged helicopter goes crashing into it destroying the last of Orochi's security personnel. With the Orochi security down, the Nursery located, they overrides in effect and the Teddy Bear in-hand, the player finally enters the Nursery itself to find Emma in the flesh. The Nursery is a high-tech lab with closed child-friendly rooms all with Orochi androids functioning as nanny-bots. The Nanny-Bots all are kept passive with a hypnotic song playing within. The song is based on the humming of the Gaia engines, as they Gaia engines can keep The Dreamers passive, the Nursery's lullaby kept the children passive, because of this all the automatic security is based on the song remaining on, shutting off the music will open higher security areas but has the added effect of turning the Nanny-Bots aggressive. Fighting through the Nanny-bots and numerous experiments will allow the player to read the notes of the operation over-seer, Dr. Schreber. Schreber had been experimenting on the children to see the potential of applying the supernatural to humans at a young age. The notes show Dr. Schreber has great respect for the malleability and critical thinking of children and as such they could push super-natural elements to new limits by using the children as carriers and test-subjects to grow concepts like lycanthropy, Filth exposure, zombification, anima infusion and spiritual possession. Dr. Schreber's notes also indicate that in his time researching Filth, Schreber had steadily become exposed to and warped by it, making him go crazier and crazier. The various monsters roaming the deeper wings are made up of the infected staff of Schreber's former colleagues. The abomination encounter outside in the first place turns out to have been a lycanthrope, unrecognizable due to the lack of exposure to folklore thus allowing it to manifest in a form outside of what society subconsciously considers werewolves to look like. At the heart of the lab is Dr. Schreber himself, completely consumed by the Filth. Once Dr. Schreber and his mad staff are put out of their misery, the player and the Council spy will look through Schreber's office for any sign of Emma. The player will locate a secret passage located below the study and the two will finally find Emma tucked-away in an operating room, kept passive by the song. Upon reaching for Emma the Council spy will inject the player with a powerful tranquilizer, revealing herself to in-fact be a double agent. Upon waking-up the player will be strapped down to one of the operating tables, with a dissection laser trained on them. The Spy makes good on her promise to reveal her name but follows it up by stating she has many names. She then proceeds to recite all of them, each in a more and more distorted voice namely "Abeko", "Abito", "Amizo", "Batna", "Eilo", "Ita", "Izorpo", "Kea", "Kali", "Kokos", "Odam", "Partasah", "Patrota", "Podo", "Satrina", "Talto" and her final name "Lilith"! Lilith's names cause the player to involuntarily spasm due to genetic memory she claims to have planted in all humans eons ago to inherently fear her. As the player is functionally immortal due to the anima in her/his body, Lilith states rather than try to kill them, she intends to chops them into pieces so they can not follow her then fires up the laser starting with the legs. Emma stirs from her slumber to try to help but Lilith just reinforces slumber by humming the lullaby as she carries Emma out with her and leave the player trapped and mutilated. As Lilith leaves she does not notice Emma has just enough time to focus on expelling a few small pieces of anima which gravitate towards the player to restore their limbs. With the extra anima the player is able to eventually seemingly break free of their restraints but only with Lilith and Emma already gone. Attempting to leave will actually reveal the player is in a form of astral projection in Emma's dreams. Following through Emma's dreams will show her point of view being "cared for" by the Smith as they constantly tested out her capacity. The Dream ends with the player seeing a much younger Emma in-front of a burning house being rescued by a firefighter. The fire-fighter will ask young Emma's name to which she responds "Anima" but over the roar of the fire the firefighter only hears "Emma", thus becoming Emma's new name when brought in to the Foster system and with young Emma too out-of focus to remember herself well after being exposed to Orochi. With this information the player will remind Emma of her true name. Spelling out Anima's name for her reminds Anima of her true nature and breaks Lilith spell over her, teleporting the player to her side in the real world. Lilth is just about to enter a portal to Tokyo, the home of Orochi corporate HQ. Lilith quickly confines the player to a force-field, leaving them helpless. However with her memories restored, Anima awakens throwing Lilith to the ground. Lilith attempts to endear herself to Emma. Telling her whatever else she is, she is in-fact a former mother and intends to love Emma just as much as she loved all her other monstrous children. Anima refuses to so much as acknowledge the name "Emma" anymore. Lilith takes Anima's stand as a bitter rejection and proceeds to violently restrain Anima. Anima quickly irrupts in a massive outburst of anima, blasting Lilith clean through the portal by herself and freeing the player. The explosion of anima however attracts Filth to her. The Filth creatures are ravenous for anima in all it's forms. When Anima states she is too small to eat for beings who eat starts, the Filth respond in unison that "You are all made of stars", a phrase the new-age cult, the Morninglight, continually market in their self-help manuals, revealing that the suspicious cult are in-fact worshipers of The Dreamers. Anima flees the area and meets with the player, warning her/him that if The Dreamers ever wake up, all that exists, won't. With one last meek request, Anima asks for her Teddy Bear returned to her, something the player complies with, but then moves to consider both finishing matters with Lilith in Tokyo and dealing with the newly exposed plans of the Morninglight. Skills and Abilities Emma's abilities first manifested as psychokinesis resulting in her house burning down. Following her report in to the authorities Orochi discovered here psychic properties. She could foresee the future and read the minds of others. Emma's mind catalyzed reactions from the Gaia Engines, it was this feat that cause Orochi to take a shinning interest in her over. Through study, the Smiths steadily discovered more and more powers, including Emma's ability to scry into the past or even people and events on the other side of the world. Emma can create psychic recordings of herself that go off only when specific types of minds enter an area. Emma locked away her own memories tying them to Teddy and leaving Teddy in agent Dzoavich's care. Emma's Teddy Bear seems to influence others and time spent looking after Teddy would make Dragan Dzoavich an ally of Emma, wanting to help Teddy get back to her. When Emma remembers her real name and is reunited with Teddy her powers become fully awakened, she can fly, teleport, unleash intense bursts of Anima, heal herself and others and phase to different dimensional levels. Emma speaks with Gaia and the Bees, which she uses to find areas of great power. If she has a Gaia Engine to focus her abilities on she can even cure Filth. Emma's power can manifest in the form it does for the player if they reject the Dreamers completely, as anima wings of golden light. Personality Emma is demure and extremely meek by default. Her time with the Smiths had lead her to become almost inherently repressed, this is due to either their dehumanizing treatment of her, or a subconscious precaution to see to it they never were exposed to her full powers. At this stage it is completely unknown what happened to her original family. If she was a normal girl chosen and possessed by Gaia as an avatar, a reconstitution of the planet's wrath of just an exceedingly powerful psychic who has synced up to the Gaia. Her identity as "Emma" was forged through-out her time with the Smiths, though she thinks of them less as parents than live-in nannies. Julia was never swayed by any part of Emma other than her power and believed her introverted persona was just a manipulative smokescreen thus she and Emma were never close and Emma faced physical reprimands from her on more than one occasion. Winston, though still not thinking of her as his actual daughter, still saw Emma as a confused child that he was responsible for, as such the closest thing to a mortal parent Emma has was Winston, though they still did not behave as family in the traditional sense to each-other. Emma sees Julia as very brave, if cruel at times and Winston as kind if naive to a point. Emma's Teddy Bear is a conduit for her to speak with the planet, because of this she needs to hide the Teddy Bear from the Smiths at-first but then later needs it to re-awaken her repressed memories. Upon her reawakening, Anima is like unto a force of nature. She lives in a mild euphoria and dreamily speaks to Gaia through her Bear. Her ultimate goal is to cure those consumed by Filth, not merely to save the world as a whole but for the sake of the people trapped in the Dreamer's nightmares, empathizing with them for her time trapped in the sleepless lullaby. The Sleepless Lullaby ♪Hello I walk into♪ ♪Empty hallways tell me♪ ♪Not to hurry♪ ♪Caution sends the signal not to♪ ♪Look around the bend and single out♪ ♪The shadows whisper through the♪ ♪Twisted corners♪ ♪Waiting silently for hours♪ ♪Watching every move and shiver♪ ♪With eyes that glitter♪ The song The Sleepless Lullaby was contracted by The Secret World from the band Bright September. Though only the first part of the song is played in-game. The song loops in the Nursery as Dr. Schreber and Lilith's hypnotic lullaby but due to the lyrics, it doubles as a theme song for Emma describing her situation and what she really is. Gallery Emma and the Smiths.png|Julia and Winston arguing over Emma Emma's memory.jpg|A psychic recorded memory of Emma Teddy (TSW).jpg|Teddy Emma and Teddy.jpg|Emma reunited with Teddy Anima.jpg|"Emma"'s awakened power An Emma.jpg|Young Anima Trivia * Though "Emma's" true parents remain unknown, one notable theory is that her mother is actually Lorraine Maillard: towards the end of ''The Park, ''a note from Lorraine's deceased boyfriend Don discusses possible baby names for their unborn child, and one of them is "Emma." From this, fans theorize that she gave birth to Emma during her time as an agent of the Council of Venice, and as a result of her status as a Bee-implanted individual and her own occult abilities, the baby was born possessed of unprecedented magical powers; unfortunately, because Lorraine was little more than an asset to more clandestine elements of the Council, her handlers had no problem with taking baby Emma away from her and depositing her in foster care - eventually leading to the events of the fire and Emma's capture by the Orochi Group. However, this theory has yet to be confirmed. * Carter, from Innsmouth Academy describes having prophetic dreams of a girl fitting Emma's description. Like she was calling out to her from around the world. Whether this was Emma reaching out to Carter or Carter's powers subconsciously reaching out to Emma is unknown. As Carter also has similar dreams of the child psychic, Jung, it is unlikely a coincidence. 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